He raised the proposal in the European Parliament in Brussels earlier this week.

Mr Luyckx called for a series of existing EU security agencies including Europol, Eurojust, Cosi, Frontex and Cepol to be pulled together in one body with sweeping powers.

Mr Luyckx said: “There is new room for action at EU level. This is how I see the change: To set up a system that would mirror the one that is being set up for monitoring external crises, a one-stop shop for information-sharing.”

Austria and Belgium first proposed a European intelligence service after the Madrid train bombing in 2004.

But the move was rejected by Britain and some other EU member nations as yet another unnecessary extension of the Brussels bureaucracy.

UK Independence Party Euro MP Godfrey Bloom said: “My worry is that it would be less like America’s CIA and more like Russia’s KGB.”